


language of averted eyes

by benditlikepress



Category: NCIS
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Case Fic, F/M, Grief/Mourning, tony and ziva get big sad and scared, well it's more hopeful really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-06
Updated: 2020-11-06
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:15:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27418627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/benditlikepress/pseuds/benditlikepress
Summary: An investigation hits too close to home as Tony and Ziva find themselves hurtling towards the point of no return.
Relationships: Ziva David/Anthony DiNozzo
Comments: 11
Kudos: 57





	language of averted eyes

**Author's Note:**

> very loosely inspired by 2x07 of miss fisher's murder mysteries, plot is changed but a bit of a vibe + a few lines of dialogue remain  
> title is from pleaser by wallows  
> slight warning – parts of this fic focus around grief and loss, so if you're particularly sensitive to that right now maybe come back to it at a later time

"Special Agent DiNozzo, this is Special Agent David. Can we come in?" 

"I - yes, of course." The man, who Ziva predicted to be in his early 50s, frowned and shook his head at himself before stepping back to allow them access. "I'm sorry, we were expecting you. I'm not sure why you took me by surprise."

"That's OK." Tony's tone was calm and reassuring. When they got into the hall, voices were audible through the closed door to their left. "And you are.." 

"Of course, sorry. I'm Carl Waters, Harry's father. The officer called us after - after what happened with Jenna."

"Mr Waters, would it be possible for us to ask your son a couple of questions? I realise this is incredibly difficult, but if we are able to gather information while it is still fresh in the mind it would be very useful to us."

"Yes, of course. Please." Mr Waters signalled the closed door to Ziva and she opened it tentatively.

The room was bright, almost too bright in the afternoon sun. To their immediate left as they entered, the remaining uniformed officer of the ones who had been sent to the house to break the news that Jenna Waters was dead was stood with his head bowed. 

At the opposite end of the room, on a couch under the window, sat Jenna Waters' husband Harry and an older woman who had her arms pulling him tightly towards her. She was saying things to him in a hushed tone Ziva couldn't quite discern, but caught their gaze as they entered. 

"Mr Waters?" 

“Are you the navy police?” His question was sudden and a little too loud, but Tony took it in stride as they entered the room.

“Yes, I’m Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo. This is Ziva David. Can we ask you a couple of questions?”

“Are you the ones who’re going to find out who hurt Jenna?”

“We are going to do everything we can.”

Harry nodded absently, a resolve at the words.

The uniformed officer exchanged a couple of words in Tony’s ear and excused himself from the room while Ziva watched the dynamic between the others present. Harry’s parents were still at the stage of still not quite knowing the right thing to say, and Ziva felt for them as she watched Mrs Waters' mouth open and close before she eventually settled on rubbing her son's arms. She could remember all too well being on the opposite side of this scenario, with people struggling to find the right words to say to her in the wake of loss.

“Please, sit down.” Mr Waters Senior held his hand out to the empty sofa opposite his wife and son, and Tony and Ziva perched on the edges of it while he stayed standing. Ziva took her notebook from her pocket and began folding the pages open as she listened to Mrs Waters whispering to her son, who looked as though he was on the verge of bursting into tears.

“How long have you and Jenna been together, Mr Waters?”

“Just over a year. But we..” He took a shaky breath. There was a balled piece of tissue in his hand that he ripped a little between his fingers. “We’ve been friends for a long time.” There was a distinct heaviness to the present tense that cut through the room as his voice cracked.

“You were very close before you got together, weren’t you, Harry?”

“Do you two know Jenna too, Mrs Waters?”

“Oh, yes. Jenna’s like a daughter to us. We were always waiting for the two of them to figure it out. We were so glad when they got together, weren’t we, Carl?”

The older man nodded stoically and Ziva thought the conversation a little cruel, seeing the way the words washed over Harry’s face as he stared at a spot on the carpet between himself and Tony.

Ziva suddenly felt hot and subtly shook out her shirt, taking a deep breath.

“Do you know what Jenna’s plans were for today?”

“She was going clothes shopping. She’s got a new job, she starts on Monday. She-” The man cut himself off again with a frown and shake of his head, shock mixed with confusion swiftly turning to pain. "How did she die? Was she awake? Did she suffer?" 

"She was hit over the head. She would not have known what was happening." Ziva answered eventually, a slight truth that she hoped was a kindness. She'd usually not sugar-coat things with families, supposing honesty is the best policy, but figured she'd made the right choice when his quiet whimpers turned into full blown sobs. 

Jenna Waters' murder had been particularly brutal. It would serve her husband no good, in this state, to hear the details of it right now.

"Where were you headed today while Jenna was shopping?" 

"Work. I'm a chef. What time did she - did it happen?" 

"We are not sure for certain yet, but it is looking like it was late morning. What time did you leave for work?" 

"I left just after 10. She was getting ready." 

“What kind of places did Jenna usually go for clothes shopping? Did she tell you where she was planning to go today?”

“No, she didn’t. She usually goes to – mom, what’s that store you took her to? I’m sorry, I-” Harry cut himself off again with another shake of his head as more tears welled in his eyes.

Ziva’s attention on the response was distracted by her phone ringing in her pocket.

“I am sorry, please excuse me.” Ziva stood up too quickly and moved out of the room as Tony watched her, eyes distracted from the parents comforting their son.

Out in the foyer, she took a deep breath before answering.

“David.”

“Ziva, it’s me. Can you ask the husband if he recognises this phone number-” McGee read out a string of numbers without ceremony that Ziva then repeated back to him. “Great, thanks. We’re heading back to the office now so we’ll catch up then.”

“OK, thank you, McGee.”

“Everything alright there?”

“Yes. His parents are here, so we are getting some of their input too.”

“Alright, good. Talk later.”

“Bye, McGee.”

Ziva hung up her phone but didn’t immediately go back into the room. She could hear Tony asking a question and Mrs Waters’ response, and as she pocketed her phone she leaned into the door.

“They met when they were kids. Couldn’t have been more than 14. Inseparable. Jenna lived two blocks away, didn’t she, Harry?”

“We were best friends. We always said..” there was a long silence, “-we said if we weren’t married by the time we were 30, we’d get married. I proposed to her on her 28th birthday. We’ve only been married four months. Why-“ The man cut himself off again with a body-wracking sob, and Ziva bit the inside of her lip.

"We lost touch a little in college, she went to UCLA, and then right before graduation she came back to DC for our high-school friend's wedding. We hadn't seen each other in a while and it's like... I just knew." There was a wistfulness in Harry's voice that made it clear it wasn't the first time he'd told the story, almost reverence cut across the devastation. It died, quickly, after the word. "There always seemed to be an excuse why it wasn't the right time to say it." 

Heat rising in her cheeks and anxiety in her stomach, Ziva opened the door quickly and stepped back into the room. It didn’t deter the conversation.

“Why did I wait so long? Does she – do you think she knew?”

“Knew what, sweetheart?”

“How much I love her. I loved her for all that time and I never..” His voice trailed off and he was staring intently at his hands, tissue now ripped fully as he balled it over and over. “What do I do now? I don’t – what do I do on my own?”

The helplessness in his voice was striking even as it struck some kind of harsh core deep inside Ziva. She remembered when she was a young Mossad officer, and she'd prided herself on her ability to compartmentalise cases and distance herself from their outcomes. It was something that had grown further away the longer she'd been in the U.S., and now she found herself struggling to breathe a little. 

She cast a glance over to Tony but he didn’t look up, staring studiously at his notepad although his pen was lying on his lap. She looked back at the three Waters’ – other victims of the crime, she thought, and apologetically walked towards them.

“I am sorry, Mr Waters, do you recognise this number? Or – Mrs Waters, maybe?” Ziva handed the scrap of paper over to the husband and his parents looked over his shoulder at the string of numbers. They all shook their heads.

“No, I’m sorry. Is it important?”

“I am not sure yet, it is just something we need to look into. But do not worry.” She tacked on the end quickly. She sat back down on the sofa at the opposite end to Tony, who’s eyes fixed from his notepad to Mr Waters without a glance in her direction.

“Is there anything that any of you can think of that you think might be relevant?” Tony’s voice sounded strange as he spoke, a little cracked and unsure of itself. “Any reason that someone might want to hurt Jenna? Co-worker, friend, maybe someone giving her unwanted attention?”

“No, no – I.. no.” The confusion and utter bewilderment on Harry’s face was striking – Ziva wondered how long it would take for this news to sink in, if he was struggling to even comprehend the idea of Jenna having a difficulty with somebody. “She’d tell me if there was.”

“Is that the kind of thing the two of you would talk about?”

“Of course, we’re married.”

“What I mean is – sometimes people might hide things from the people they care about. To protect them, maybe. Would Jenna have done something like that, if she thought you might worry?”

“No, never. We told each other everything.” Ziva had felt Tony’s eyes burning into her as she’d spoken and even as Harry replied, though the silence that followed was enough to grab his attention back to their interviewee.

“How about Jenna’s mood? Had she seemed worried or stressed recently? Different than usual?”

“No, not at all. She was excited to start her new job, that’s all. We were gonna go out tonight. D’you think she – would she have told me something was up?”

“We don’t know that, Mr Waters. We’re just trying to figure out if Jenna had been dealing with any difficulties in the past couple of days or weeks that might help us figure out what happened.”

"I’ve been so busy this week. I thought we had so much time." 

At the end of the sentence, Ziva found herself unable to tear her eyes away from Tony. She could see him desperately remaining stoic, what he was thinking of not entirely a mystery. It was ringing through her own mind, too: how the words he was saying struck a chord within her. That, especially on present evidence of her life so far, there was nothing stopping one of them telling a story like this one day. Leaving it a little too late and never getting a chance – or, even, getting a chance cut short.

“Is all of this necessary? Can’t you come back another time? Surely you can see that he’s not fit to answer questions.” Mrs Waters interjected after another prolonged period of silence, and Ziva looked down at her notes.

“I think we’re OK for now. I hope you understand that we aren’t asking questions to cause any more upset. It’s just that the quicker we can ask these questions, the more fresh the memories will be and that means more accurate information. We’ll be in touch again in the next couple of days.” Tony’s demeanour since they’d stepped into the room had been strikingly caring, concern and poise in every word. Ziva was certain that she was the only one who could notice there was anything behind it more than the simple, genuine sympathy that came easily to him.

“I’ll show you out.” Mr Waters Senior stood up ceremoniously and wiped his palms on his trousers as though they were clammy. Tony hesitated for a moment in front of the mother and son before stepping out into the hallway to follow him, and Ziva saw his jaw tighten as he walked past her.

“We are very sorry for your loss, Mr Waters.”

“It’s Harry that needs it, not me. Jenna was a good kid. I don’t know how he’s gonna cope with this. He didn’t stop shaking for hours.”

"Would you like us to call a doctor?" 

“Thank you, but I don’t think that’ll be necessary.”

“If it is, please call this number.” Ziva scribbled the hospital numbers on her notepad and passed the paper over to the man. He took them with a grim smile.

“Thank you very much, agents.”

“We will be in touch. Will you..”

“We’ll stay here.”

“OK. Good. Thank you, Mr Waters.”

Ziva ducked her head at him as Tony opened the front door and stepped out into the cold of the evening without giving her a second glance.

* * *

The silence in the car once they got inside was deafening. Neither of them spoke or made moves to put on their seatbelts, and Ziva almost jumped when Tony suddenly began to pull off his jacket and ball it up.

Placing it in his hands to drop onto the back seat, he turned his torso towards her and leaned his arm over her seat as he looked behind him. It was a casual movement, something he did constantly and wouldn't usually elicit any emotion other than a flutter of sexual tension in the air. Now, though, it was suffocating, the two of them trying to avoid eye contact despite their close proximity as his body briefly crowded around her.

Settled back in his seat, Tony started the engine without pause and pulled out onto the road. He was gripping the steering wheel so tight his knuckles were white, clutched desperately in his hands.

"Tony, I.." 

“What did McGee say about that phone number?”

The words were quick and almost forceful out of his mouth the second Ziva dawdled over her own speech. She blinked at him.

“He did not say, just wanted us to check it out. We can ask when we get back.”

Tony nodded curtly and silence fell over them again. Ziva’s mouth opened and closed as she watched him, his attention almost excessively on the road ahead. Deciding it was a lost cause, she turned to look out of her own window.

It never got any easier, trying to talk to someone who had just lost a loved one. This one had been particularly harrowing, his every tear-soaked sentiment striking a chord deep inside Ziva's chest. It was selfish of her, to equate his experience so close to theoreticals of her own. She felt tears stinging at her eyes and blinked a few times, wishing away ones she knew she had no right to shed. 

Her attention, focused as it was on the window, seemed to grab Tony’s attention. She felt the occasional burning on the back of her head as he flicked between watching her and the road, and she met him in the middle by turning back to face the windscreen head on.

"It shouldn't be this difficult." 

Ziva wasn't sure, really, what he was referring to. Some idea that had been rattling around his head since they got in the car - not about Harry Waters, and asking him questions about his wife, but some more abstract scary possibility that had awoken in his head after the fact. 

"No. It shouldn't." She answered, because she wasn't really sure what else to say. 

* * *

The bullpen was bustling when they got back, as it often was at the start of a case. Ziva could hear her desk phone ringing even as she exited the elevator, and McGee jumped across the desks to answer it. She tried to centre herself back into the present, putting thoughts of Jenna Waters' husband out of her mind and focusing on the woman herself. 

There was an empty box in the centre of the floor surrounded by various items – folders, letters, pictures, and other paraphernalia. Ziva glanced over it while McGee continued talking to what sounded like Ducky on the phone before hanging up and vacating her desk.

“Autopsy’s about to start. How was the husband?” The question was innocent enough from McGee, but it earned a half-snort from Tony. “That bad?”

“Someone will have to go again tomorrow, or the day after if we can afford it. It was impossible to get a straight answer out of him.” Ziva’s eyes were still stuck on Tony as he unpacked his pockets and sat down at his desk, chair pulled harshly underneath it.

“Poor guy.”

“Yeah. What do we have?” Tony redirected the conversation before McGee could get any more sucked into that topic. He approached the centre of the bullpen and flicked a couple of buttons on the big screen until a picture of Jenna Waters came into view.

“No known enemies. She was starting a new job on Monday, but there’s nothing so far that’s raising any red flags. Her car was full of stuff from her old office, it’s gonna take forever to go through.”

“Anyone spoken to her old boss?”

“Just did. He’s on the Navy Yard.” Ziva heard Gibbs’ voice approaching over her shoulder, armed with coffee and a stern expression. McGee continued.

“No cause of death yet, but it was pretty brutal. Overkill. Serial killer?" 

"Look into it." Gibbs responded to McGee, who nodded and sat down at his computer. 

Gibbs’ attention turned to the box and it’s spilled contents covering the floor – the evidence taken from Jenna’s trunk. He nodded towards it.

"You two. Abs is swamped. Take this and head to the conference room, see if there’s anything interesting.” 

Tony and Ziva picked up the evidence quietly and packed it back into the box, and Ziva wondered if she was imagining the way the bullpen seemed to grow silent around them as they worked.

* * *

The conference room table stretched out between them, large and foreboding, and Ziva busied herself emptying the evidence box and picking up loose pieces of paper as they fell onto the table.

"Looks like she kept all of her bank statements and wage confirmations at work. That doesn't seem safe." 

It was the first words either of them had spoken since they got to the room, and their eyes met in the aftermath as though it was a surprise to Tony too.

"Do you think someone may have been trying to steal them?" 

"There's gotta be a better way than that, surely. No, it seemed too personal for that." Tony’s voice trailed off a little and Ziva tried to catch his eye but he was distracted by the sea of documents, eyes glazing over them.

More bank statements followed, and notepads, and official documents with the Navy letterhead. Underneath, a pile of photographs and post-it notes and other day-to-day office ware.

“She really did not like to throw anything away.” Ziva commented as she glanced through post-it notes detailing meeting times and phone numbers. Lucky for them, of course, that she’d keep such detailed records of her day-to-day life.

“Gonna take a while to figure out what’s significant.”

“All of it was. To her.”

Tony hummed oddly, and Ziva’s eye caught on his before she looked back down at the pile.

A picture of a much younger Jenna and Harry Waters, sat on school bleachers, with his arm slung over her shoulder and her laughing showing her teeth. Another of the two of them stood in the ocean, sunglasses perched on their heads. A third, of Jenna and two younger adults who looked to be her siblings.

Ziva smiled a fraction at the pile of dog-eared photographs, pin marks in the top corners. 

"She was a sentimental woman, yes? All of these photographs on her walls. I am not sure I even own this many." 

She looked back at Tony to try and engage him but his attention had been grabbed by one picture in particular. A wedding picture, from the fraction of the top of it that she could see.

“Four months.” Tony passed the comment out more to himself, the wistful cynicism in his voice clear to hear.

“After knowing each other for so long, it is next to nothing.”

“Yeah. Yeah.” The repeated word got Ziva’s attention, the way it drifted at the extra context behind her words. The picture of Jenna and Harry was poised between Tony's fingers and he flicked the back of it absently before placing it down on the table.

A silent conversation passed, the type they'd had hundreds of times before. His hand was on the table between them now and they were both staring at it - a foreign object, tentative but fingers curled. Ziva thought about touching it. Covering it with her own. Thought about standing up and crossing the room, getting as far away from it as possible.

In the end, she did nothing. He rapped his knuckles against the surface to break the silence.

“What does it say on all those?” Tony signalled the brightly coloured post-it notes Ziva had been flattening into a garishly rainbow pile. She accepted the invitation back into clearer waters.

“Meetings. Reminders. Pick up dry cleaning. Ring base 2pm.”

“Eh, maybe something’ll come of it.” As Tony said the sentence, the door to the room opened and Director Vance stepped inside. He was wearing a long dark coloured coat over his suit and holding a briefcase.

"Agent David, DiNozzo." 

"Good evening, sir." 

"It's later than evening. What's going on here?" 

"Personal effects of our victim. Trunk full of stuff." 

Vance pored over the table, a little more than politely, and nodded. 

"Any leads?" 

"Not yet." 

Vance looked at them a little strangely, and Ziva supposed it was probably the quiet. Loaded silence, punctuated by comments about the case. Nothing extra. Nothing personal. 

“Alright, well update me once we’ve learned more. Let’s get a quick solve on this one. Good night.”

He closed the door again and a breath of air seemed to be inhaled throughout the room, a brief pause in the conversation having finished much too quickly. Ziva turned a few more pages over in her fingers and, before too long, found something a little more noteworthy than a bill.

“What’s that?”

“A letter. It was tucked in the back of this notepad.” Ziva looked over the messy script and tried to recall if she’d seen anything handwritten at the Waters household earlier that evening.

“Read it out.” Tony was still flicking through the envelopes in front of him as Ziva tried to catch his eye. Unsuccessful, she began.

**" _I had an amazing time with you last night. I swear, every hour with you seems like it lasts 5 minutes. Let’s not leave it that long again. Leaving you in bed this morning to go to work was like torture. Curled up in my sheets. I wanted nothing more than to wrap myself around you and fall back asleep until you woke me up the right way. Can’t wait to see you again.”_**

The tone of the letter was flirtatious and suggestive but Ziva heard the strange tone in her voice as she read it, morbid and professionally curious. She stared at the words and placed it on the table towards Tony.

"It's a letter from her husband." 

She frowned at his certainty. "We cannot be sure yet." 

"What are you saying?" 

“The way it is written.. it does not sound like two people who are living together. ‘Let’s not leave it that long again’. Do you not think?”

Tony's expression changed like the wind. His carefully masking composure fell quickly, incredulity and disbelief spread across his face. "What are you suggesting –“, he frowned and Ziva saw him shake his head a little, “-what, that we have to go back to that guy and ask him if his wife was cheating on him? Show him this and it might not even be from him? The guy's broken, Ziva, I don't-" 

"Hey." Ziva raised her voice slightly to match his and it silenced him immediately. His reaction so sudden and extreme to a fairly standard point of questioning. She pressed her palms on the table. "I am not suggesting anything. I am just saying.. we cannot jump to any conclusions. Yes? You know this. We need an open mind in spite of what your gut is telling you." 

Tony was quiet for a moment. 

"It might have even been him, Tony, we have not confirmed his alibi yet." 

"C'mon, you can't _seriously_ believe that. The guy couldn't even stand up by himself." 

"What I believe, what _you_ believe, does not matter right now."

He blinked slowly, and though his words had been harsh there’d been no malice about them. Anger, internal, and a suspension of belief. He sighed. "You're right. I know, you're right."

"OK, shall we continue?" 

"Actually, I think I.." Tony checked his watch. "It's late, let's take this all back downstairs." 

It was abrupt and curt but there was a feeling simmering behind it – a desire to move on from the conversation before anything more was brought up.

Ziva knew that Tony often felt cases deeply, much like she did. That he could be brash and loud and unexpectedly earnest, sometimes, when trying to solve them. This one was different. It felt personal. She knew they were all strung-out after a few tough cases back to back but she could barely remember him reacting so viscerally to a case before. 

His anger was bubbling – a quiet, calm fury that filled the silence that stretched out between them as they packed up the evidence and took the box back downstairs to the bullpen.

It was deserted by now, the hours apparently having stretched out more than she realised. Tony placed the evidence box on his desk and sat down behind it, not making any request to Ziva for a task and so she moved to the opposite side of it to continue poring over the items.

She was desperate to reach out to him, to say or do something, touch him, any way of vocalising the thoughts rushing through her mind.

Ziva had always prided herself on her ability to recognise what Tony was thinking. In the early days it had been a power tactic - a way to gain a little control over him, to delight in the way he'd flounder when she pushed exactly the right buttons. 

It was something entirely different now. Emotions laid bare in his eyes, an entire conversation written across his face. 

“I don’t think there’s anything of note in here.”

“No, I agree. Until we can check out these names and numbers, it is a dead end.”

“Big job. I’ll check in with the boss in the morning and maybe us and McGee can split them. Sorry, I-” He stopped talking abruptly and stood up, swallowing. “It’s late. We should get going. It’ll still be here in the morning.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I’m gonna..” Tony opened his drawer that pulled out of the mechanism loudly, gathering his things and stuffing them into his pockets and bag.

Ziva implored herself to reach out as he busied himself, her mind racing through potential ideas of ice-breakers or more sincere attempts to talk about what was happening. By the time his coat was on she still hadn’t moved, stood in front of his desk redundantly.

“Tony….”

“Yeah?”

There was a quiet pleading in his expression, wide eyes and closed mouth. Asking her to let him leave. She smiled tightly.

“It can wait. See you tomorrow.”

He nodded and ducked his head, looking as though he couldn’t get out of there fast enough. Ziva sat at her desk for a minute or two, a little in shock, before packing up and driving straight to her office without a second thought.

* * *

Ziva’s office was cold, as it often was at night, and she wrapped her jacket a little tighter around her as she sat down in the dim desk light.

Her diaries, as always, had been waiting for her. She wrote several pages, every thought that was on her mind. She always felt better afterwards - as much a cathartic activity as exercise. Ziva found that sometimes it was an interaction with a witness or loved one that stuck with her the most about a case. Their existence a physical representation of the act. 

It was strange, that nobody in her life knew this place existed. Had no idea of the hours upon hours she spent in this room, pouring her heart out into book upon book of things she would even be scared to say out loud in an empty room.

It had made her think about Tony, seeing Jenna Waters’ husband mourning her loss in the way that he had. It made her think about every other person in her life that she’d lost – ones she’d grieved, and ones she’d never been given the chance to. How, against all of her instincts towards self-preservation and keeping people at arms length, she’d allowed him to insert himself into every facet of her life to the extent that she couldn’t imagine what it would look like without him in it.

She remembered that summer, where she’d been forced to confront the idea. How she’d desperately filled her mind with anything but him to pass the hours in the dark, not even finding it within herself to use what happened as a self-punishment tool. The thought of him had been off-limits, too much to bear on top of everything else on her, until she’d had the hood lifted from her face and she’d seen him for the first time in months.

If it hadn’t been clear to her before, it had been then. The grip he had over her – not suffocating, but intrinsic: as much a part of her being as anything else.

To be confronted with that open grief – the idea of losing him in such a quick and sudden way, made her chest heave. Forced her to confront things she tried very hard to convince herself were not applicable to her.

Ziva could remember times she'd found it almost easy to admit feelings: never simple, but not so laboured. Deep down, she knew that the feelings she'd had for those people paled in comparison to Tony. That, in fact, that was why she'd found it easier in the past: it is a lot more possible to show honesty when the feelings you're admitting to barely scratch the surface. Damage minimal. Repercussions not even worth mentioning. 

She wished it could be easy now. How she felt inside _was_ easy, really, underneath the years of trauma and near-death experiences and jealousy and misunderstandings. They served only to muddy the outside expression, while inside her feelings remained true. 

She thought about Jenna Waters, a woman with a heart so big she could fill her office with photographs to remember her loved ones but took years to take the plunge to follow her desires. It was something Ziva had thought about a lot: the implications of fear. Not being able to take that next step, and whether it negated the feeling at all. 

She treasured her control over the more extreme emotions. Clung onto it for all the times in the past she hadn't been able to. She wondered, often, if people would doubt her as a result. Would not be able to understand the depth of how she felt, for how long she’d tried to keep it under wraps.

It wasn’t always the case, she could see now. Not in Jenna Waters' case. It was clear, even from photos, that she'd loved Harry from the first time they'd met. 

* * *

When Ziva got back to her apartment well past midnight, Tony was sat on the front steps of the building playing with his phone. 

She saw him from far away on her approach, and took slow steps up to the building as she ran through her head possible explanations for his arrival. He didn’t seem to notice her until she was at the foot of them, when he slowly pocketed his phone and looked up to meet her in the eye.

“Too late?”

“No.” Ziva eventually answered his bashful smile. “Come in.”

It took him a moment to stand up, the shaking of his limbs making Ziva wonder how long he’d been sat there. As she let herself in the front door of the building she felt him suddenly a little too close, heat radiating against her back from where he stood perched on the top step behind her.

Distance grew between them again as they climbed the stairs, and by the time Ziva was unlocking her apartment door Tony had stepped back to wait a little way away.

Her apartment was cold and dark after a long day away from it, and Ziva went about turning on lights and dumping her jacket, which she replaced with a hooded sweatshirt. Tony, for his part, stood in the entrance-way as though he hadn’t been inside the place a hundred times before.

When Ziva eventually finished her tasks, she found herself similarly stood in front of him. Formal, and practiced.

“Drink?”

Tony nodded and the silence was almost enough to induce anxiety, something heavy in the air between them. Ziva busied herself pouring two stiff drinks and when she returned as slowly as possible he’d finally made his way into the main area of the apartment. 

"Have you been waiting long?" 

"Not really. Where've you been?" 

"I just had some errands to run." Technically the truth, though Ziva still felt a little guilty that it was such a determined lie. She'd been writing about him, after all. “Please..”

They sat down on the sofa and Tony stared at the drink in his hands, rubbing his thumb over the side of the glass. Ziva’s own gaze shifted between his face and the movement, waiting.

“I’m sorry,” he blurted suddenly, eyes still on the glass, “sorry for earlier. I was a little short with you. You were right. I was jumping to conclusions." 

“That is alright, Tony.”

“I-”

“It is a tough case.” Ziva finished with interruption, and he finally looked up to meet her eyes. His gaze was unsure, and frowning.

“Yeah. Yeah, exactly.”

“It happens, sometimes. We get a little too involved, and it is hard to keep our emotions in check.”

The smile he responded with was a little sarcastic, but it was directed at himself rather than her. One of his hands came up to run over his forehead and eyes, a tired motion. "The letter. I took it to the husband on my way home. He wrote it when they first started dating." 

Ziva remembered the words that had been written: the childlike excitement, a form of infatuation that could come at the beginning of a relationship with someone you knew as well as the two of them had done. "She kept it all of that time." 

"And to think, he was worried she'd died not knowing how much he loved her." 

"She knew. You always know."

Ziva regretted the words as they tumbled out of her mouth, a little too familiar and knowing in the context of the evening so far. Tony’s focus stuck on her and she swallowed at the depth of sincerity in his eyes.

“I left.”

She frowned at the words, feeling as though she was missing something after the prolonged silent eye contact. “Sorry?”

“Earlier. The office. I left. This whole day, all I’ve been thinking about is what he said. Leaving it too late. Wasting time. And then I left.”

Ziva felt her heart speed up in her chest as Tony frowned to match hers, eyes unfocused on the room in front of him.

"What are you thinking about?" 

"Somalia." 

Shackles rising. "Tony..." 

"It's almost happened, y'know. I've almost been that guy." 

Ziva watched him as he spoke, something like denial tinged in his voice. She thought about that summer, and the couple of other times they'd been close to that situation. Herself, with the Benoits’ - it had been so many years now, but she still remembered the ball of pure stone in her stomach for every second after she'd watched Tony's car blow up. 

It should've been a wake-up call, even back then. 

"I know." 

"I'm sorry. For how I reacted. I just.." Tony exhaled, "I guess I've never been confronted with it like that before." His gaze was so focused as he stared at his hand on the sofa between them that Ziva could’ve been fooled into thinking there was something on it he was watching. His fingers flexed a little and it was as if she could see him battling: forcing the conversation into waters they so studiously avoided. "What we do, it's so dangerous. What _you_ do - you're.. reckless, sometimes. And you dive head-first into trouble." 

There was affection in his words rather than anger or malice, but still Ziva felt an instinctive need to defend herself against the claims. "I cannot change who I am, Tony." 

"I'm not asking you to.” He barely waited for her to finish talking before he started himself, a confirming shake of the head. “I'd never ask you to do that." 

"Then what are you asking me?" 

“I’m not asking anything. I just want you to – I _need_ you to know. I can't not say anything. Not anymore. Not after..." 

"Tony." 

"It-" 

"Please." One word, a quiet desperate sound. 

They still weren’t really saying it, not quite allowing themselves to put it fully into words. Ziva kissed him, then, not ready for him to say anything else.

It took Tony a moment to respond before his lips pressed against hers in return, and Ziva realised she'd genuinely taken him by surprise. His hand slowly came up to cup her face and she felt his warm fingertips in her hair, strong and reassuring even in the face of such uncertainty. 

When his head caught up with his actions, Tony’s tongue made its way into her mouth with a practiced litheness. Where his touch on her skin had been heated and intoxicating in the past, it was reassuring now. Calm and slow and imploring - a message from his fingers onto her, laid bare. 

Ziva moved further into his space, crowding herself around him and feeling his body heat against her in a way that terrified her just a little deep in the part of her brain that had been denying herself this for so long.

When he pulled back it was slow and then all at once, hands releasing her like he’d been burned. “Ziva, wait.”

She pulled her face away from his and for a brief moment his mouth followed hers, seeking out contact between their cheeks as he dipped his head, before he finally listened to his own words and pulled away. Ziva began to frown in confusion at the touch as Tony closed his eyes and poised his hands on his lap. Missing their touch on her skin, she watched him still leaning in a little too close.

“I know what you’re trying to do. And I get it, I do. But I need to.. I just need to say it, alright?”

She knew he did understand it. She’d watched it from him, time and time again: a pattern they both followed, to varying degrees. His desire to distance himself, an inability to confidently navigate relationships with both physical and mental barriers getting in the way.

She knew the destruction too well - a littered history of betrayal and death and heartache from people she allowed herself to love. Romantically, familially, platonically. She wondered if it made any difference to Tony, that she'd never said the words out loud. A strange form of protection, somehow, from the inevitable. 

“I.. god, Ziva.” Her name was a whisper on his lips that sent a shiver through her, and one of his hands came back to touch her wrist. It was clammy and warm despite the time he spent sat outside. "I told you, back then, that I tried to find you because I couldn't live without you. I meant that, y'know. I really did. I don't wanna be a guy who ends up sitting there having that conversation, regretting all these mistakes we've made. And I don't want to.. if you're in that position,"

"Tony." His name on her lips, again and again. A quick, quiet plead.

"I don't want you to ever question what I thought of you. That I.. I Iove you, Ziva, and I know this a weird way to say it and I don't exactly know where to go with this, but I just want to make sure I say it at least once."

The words had Ziva’s heart beating in her mouth, her breathing still slightly ragged from the kiss as she tried to regain composure. Tony didn’t pause for long to see how she would react, apparently also realising that if he stopped for even a second he’d think of an excuse to stop talking altogether.

"And a day will come where we should stop talking in hypotheticals and worrying about things that've happened in the past and just realise that - hey, none of that matters to either of us. I just wanna be with you." 

Ziva stared at him in something of disbelief, wondering how words she would’ve given anything to hear could also be tinged with so much anxiety and uncertainty. Her loose hand came to cover his that was still on her wrist, and she ran her fingers along it as though to convey a message.

"I just wanted you to know. But, you did, right? Like you said, you always know."

"I did. Maybe I.." Ziva hesitated, "I did."

“Still, I know it’s not the same as saying it. I wrote it on my bucket list, y'know." 

“Would you have said it? If this hadn’t happened?”

He did consider it, briefly, and put his hands back into his own lap. Ziva watched them as she felt the loss of his skin against hers. “Yeah, I would. I don’t know when. Don’t know if.. well. I think what happened today just put the thought in my mind. I got home and knew that if I didn’t leave right away to come here I’d talk myself out of it. It's like Waters said – you always end up finding an excuse. Spending so long trying to convince yourself of reasons to deny yourself."

“It is more that can be said for me. Even now I am sat here trying to..” Ziva couldn’t remember the two of them ever hesitating as much as they were in this conversation, pauses to gain some semblance of control. “Seeing her husband today, how he spoke about her.. I could not get you out of my head.”

“Me neither.” His voice was quiet and almost soothing, a reminder of the common ground between them.

"You know I see myself in him too. Not just in the way that you mean, but also in.. in the way he could love someone, and see them be torn away." Ziva looked at her hands in a way that reminded her of Harry Waters, and so drew her eyes away again. "That I could open myself up to that and have to watch as something like that happened to you. This - what we do, every day. What has _always_ surrounded me, Tony. Harry Waters is a chef with loving parents, he never would have expected something like this to happen to him. But for people like me.."

"Like us. People like us, Ziva."

She felt a pang of guilt, that she'd unintentionally ignored how Tony's mother's death may have done the same to him. She supposed it was a consequence of how little he talked of her, though that in itself was a clear sign. 

“I am so sick of allowing myself that feeling only for it to be taken away.” There was an honesty in Ziva’s voice that she barely recognised for herself, her eyes a touch misty. “I am not sure how I would react if it happened to you.”

The openness in Tony’s gaze was striking, as though Ziva could see deep inside his soul as he processed the words.

"All the more reason to take the plunge, right?" He chuckled a little, out of place, and rubbed his hands over his eyes. "God, I wish it were that easy." 

It was striking, really, the honesty with which this conversation was taking place. A strange irony, that they were both able to freely acknowledge their feelings with each other while still fuelled by the fear that had kept them from doing so in the past. 

Ziva’s uncertainty of how to respond made the moment cling in the air between them for a couple of seconds too long, and in the absence of anything else Tony rubbed his hands over his legs. A hint of nerves, maybe.

“I’m sorry, Tony.” She watched him with concern as he moved his hands, but when he looked back up to meet her eyes they were tinged with confusion.

“For what?”

“It must sound like turned signals, when I say how I feel while also trying to explain that I find it difficult to. I know you are trying. I just want you to understand that I am too, even if it is not always so obvious. You do not give yourself enough credit when it comes to being able to talk about these things.”

A long silence followed and she searched his face for understanding. A small smile eventually followed.

“Mixed signals. Not turned.”

“Same difference.”

He smiled brighter, then, and Ziva couldn’t resist the urge to place her own hand on his leg where he’d been rubbing and stroke it a little.

“You have always understood me better than other people, Tony. And I just want you to feel that now – that what you are saying, I understand more than you realise. We cannot wait forever. Not after today.”

There was some finality to the statement, even with the promise. That this well between them, so difficult to navigate, was going to be filled once and for all. That they’d be able to step forward, together, and not have to hide anymore. Even so, the authority made Tony sigh alongside his smile.

“I know it’s late. I should probably..” Tony got to his feet and Ziva’s heart quickened again as she followed him.

"What are you doing?" 

"I should be getting home. I just wanted to - well, I just needed to get that out." She could see him preparing to batten down the hatches again, placing up defences and tucking away everything related to this that was uncertain and scary and overwhelming. She’d succeeded, again, in pushing him away.

"You cannot just leave after.." 

"Ziva-" 

"Wait." Ziva grabbed Tony's arm and pulled him towards her. He came willingly, turning back on his heels to face her. "I want you to stay. Stay." 

They were strangely desperate words, but spoke with a quiet confidence. 

"I didn't come round here to start anything, Ziva. I just wanted to let you know. I'll be crappy company tonight." 

"So will I. I’m not letting you run away again. We have said what needed to be said for now, we can..” Ziva looked around the room, feeling the panicked mix of a weight being lifted from her shoulders even as a weight pressed on her chest. Pressure building inside her to get him to stay. Her eyes, eventually, settled on the small television on the back wall. "Shall we watch a film?"

He frowned even as he broke into a smirk. "Are you for real?" 

"Yes. Let's just settle, for a little while." 

There was more than one meaning to the word, and truthfully Ziva felt as though she needed a moment to sit down and process everything that had happened that evening. Tony held her gaze for a long moment before nodding, and then amusement mixed with a familiar intimacy took over his features.

“What are you feeling?”

“You choose.”

“Is this a trick?”

Ziva chuckled. “It is against my better judgement, I know.”

She watched as Tony crossed the room and looked at her pitiful collection of films – mainly ones he’d bought for her or lent on the insistence she watched them. His head flicked back to her every couple of seconds as if checking she was still there, and eventually he selected one and placed it into the TV.

It was a little surreal as the title credits began to play and he took a seat next to Ziva, a mundane domesticity to an evening that had been anything but. They were both quiet for a few moments, not actively touching but their bodies pressed up against each other all the same.

The energy in the air suddenly calmed for the first time in hours, both of them managing to refocus their attentions on something except each other. 

"Today was the worst." 

The admission seemed to come easily, once Ziva wasn’t looking at him.

"I know. That poor woman had her whole life ahead of her." 

"We'll catch him." 

"Yes. We will." 

“And everything else…” Tony sighed and looked at her again carefully, gaze flitting between her eyes. “We’ll figure it out. Right?”

“We will.”

“Soon, though. Not..” He exhaled and tipped his head. “Not some far-off date. Soon.”

Unsurprisingly, their attempts to detract from the topic had led them straight back to it. Hurtling back to the path they’d trodden so many times over the years. His insistence only served to make Ziva’s heart quicken again, it’s desires over-riding her flawed logic more and more where he was concerned. She couldn’t let this conversation go to waste, like so many others. She’d been asking for ease, but now they’d allowed themselves an easy escape she felt herself trying to fight it. Not allowing herself this chance to run, or to put it off for another day.

She took a breath and stared at his hooded eyes.

"You were right; what you said in the car this afternoon. It should not be this difficult. It doesn't have to be. Does it?" 

It was something of a loaded question, Ziva knew, as she was responsible for at least 50% of the difficulties. The question seemed to strike a chord in Tony regardless, and his hand found its way to the side of her face. In spite of the fear, in spite of what they’d said about not starting anything tonight, a touch to cross the distance between them.

“Not if we decide it can be easy. It can be very easy, if we want it to.”

“And tomorrow?” Ziva asked uncertainly as the gap began to close between them again, feeling herself being drawn into his orbit.

“Like I said. We’ll figure it out.”

There was relent rather than determination in his voice, but as Ziva closed the space between their lips and captured his with her own she felt a steely resolve. They’d figure it out. They had to.

They didn’t have any other choice.


End file.
